When an elevator car containing passengers or a balance weight for balancing with the car descends, for some abnormal reason, below the lowest floor of a building and moves down to a pit portion of a hoistway, a shock absorber for an elevator cushions the impact due to collision of the car or balance weight with the pit portion. A spring shock absorber, an oil-filled shock absorber, or a resin shock absorber is used as the shock absorber. The following patent documents each disclose an inspection method or an inspection apparatus for enabling checking of whether or not these shock absorbers have the effect of normally cushioning the impact.